It has heretofore been proposed to provide upwardly tapering, generally conical or pyramidal bag breaking devices. However, so far as is known, none of these has been specially adapted for use on enclosures, such as the pressurized tanks of blast cleaning systems, where it becomes very important to facilitate the breaking of bags of particulate materials, and the emptying of the bags into the tank or other enclosure. In systems of the type referred to, an essential component is a pressurized tank, adapted to hold a quantity of abrasive media, such as glass beads, sand, or any of a wide variety of other particulates. With the materials in the tank, the tank is pressurized, so that the abrasive media can leave the tank in a stream of air under high pressure, and can be discharged with the carrier stream against a surface that is to be blast-cleaned.
Regular and continued operation of the system results in relatively swift emptying of the tank, as a result of which the practice is to depressurize the tank, manually break open a fresh bag of particulate material, up-end it over the fill opening of the tank, and after the bag is fully emptied re-pressurize the tank so that the system can again be placed into operation.
The time and effort required to manually open a bag, and thereafter physically lift it and up-end it without loss of the contents, into position above the fill opening, is obviously to be avoided if at all possible. The aim of the present invention is to provide an improved means, designed especially for fill openings of the character described, that will eliminate this time-consuming and laborious task.